At 69, after 45 years building one of India’s most respected industrial businesses, B. Santhanam says his only regret is that he was not born at 28, in the Gen Alpha era. Then he explains why, and it is a challenge, not nostalgia.

This is Part 4 of 4 in the B. Santhanam series.

• He argues India has the policy, the incentives and the capability for its 2047 ambition, and is short on one thing: nerve. He offers the iPhone as evidence that the hard transformation is already possible, more than 14 million built in India in roughly four years.
• He tells inheritors to stop being custodians of what their families built and start scaling. He makes the case for patient capital by pointing at the risk-takers of 15 years ago, whose asset bets, even the ones banks lost money on, created the opportunities the country now runs on.
• And he closes on purpose: how a 350-year-old company discovered why it exists, and why that question keeps even its senior leaders honest.

If you have inherited something, built something, or are deciding whether to make a bigger bet on India, this is the conversation that puts your own caution on the table.

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